Weird Little Guys of FOSS

Known for

nostr stuff

Alex is a prominent figure in the nostr community, and an antagonist on FOSS social media platforms generally. He developed the software used for Truth Social, Donald Trump’s fediverse thing, [1][source] and was banned from the Mastodon instance he used back in 2023 for being openly transphobic. [2][source] [3][source] Alex is financially supported by Jack Dorsey [4]Jack Dorsey via the “andOtherStuff” collective. [5][source]

This photo of him on the right is prominently displayed on his personal website.

Added August 31, 2026

Known for

SerenityOS, Ladybird

Alias

AwesomeKling

Andreas is the founder of SerenityOS and the Ladybird web browser. He posted in support of Charlie Kirk after his assassination, [1][source] gets triggered by the phrase “punch nazis”, [2][source] and the idea of using gender-neutral pronouns in documentation. [3][source] Andreas boosted David Heinemeier Hansson [4]David Heinemeier Hansson ’s tweets on DEI and the white supremacist “white replacement” theory, [5][source] and expressed solidarity with David’s persecution for his “banal, mainstream” positions, positions which include, for example, the forced expulsion of non-white people from Europe. [6][source]

Ladybird and Andreas have received sponsorships from FUTO, Cloudflare, Shopify and 37signals (i.e. David Heinemeier Hansson), Proton, Jetbrains, Sourcegraph, and others. [7][source]

Added September 01, 2026

Known for

Proton founder (ProtonMail, Proton VPN, etc)

Proton claims to be politically neutral, but in early 2025 Andy praised the Republican party on X, [1][source] and Proton issued an “official response” on Mastodon and Reddit (later deleted as “not actually official”) re-enforcing that Proton and/or Andy threw their hat in with Trump and the Republican party. [2][source]

Proton financially supports Andreas Kling [3]Andreas Kling .

Added September 04, 2026

Known for

Mozilla co-founder, Brave browser, creator of JavaScript

Brendan got a lot of flack several years ago, resigning as Mozilla CEO, after he donated a few thousand dollars to support California’s Proposition 8, an initiative that would have banned same-sex marriage in California. [1][source]

After Mozilla, he moved on to co-found and lead as CEO the Brave Browser, which he used to push his own cryptocurrency micro-payments system. [2][source] He used Brave to support the hate website Kiwi Farms, which has been alleged to have instigated several suicides as a result of their harassment, working with their site admins to pose Brave as a safe and secure means for their members to access the site and conduct their harassment. [3][source] Kiwi Farms also took advantage of Brave’s crypto scheme for funding, which was brought to Eich’s attention and never corrected. [4][source]

Added August 31, 2026

Known for

The Lunduke Journal, “Linux Sucks”

Bryan is a prolific YouTube personality, maintains a personal blog, and frequently tweets on his X account, using all of these platforms to push “anti-woke” ideas and conspiracy theories, and harass anyone he views as too progressive, trans, female, or black. Big fan of RedHat DEI conspiracy theories. [1][source]

Has a huge problem with transgender people and goes out of his way to harass them, misgender them, deadname them, the works.

Added August 31, 2026

Known for

Urbit

Alias

moldbug

Curtis is the founder and on-again-off-again leader of the Urbit networking protocol project. He is also considered one of the founders of the mainstream neo-reactionary “dark enlightenment” movement which explicitly and deliberately aims to undermine democracy in Western countries.

Curtis’s work has set the playbook for the American Republican party and a number of techno-fascists. Curtis is an associate of J.D. Vance, who cites him as an influence and arguably has Curtis to thank, in part, for his position as Vice President. [1][source] Peter Thiel, a key figure in the right-wing mass-surveillance company Palantir, known for enabling mass deportations in the United States, was also influenced by Curtis. [2][source]

Curtis is an associate of Eron Wolf [3]Eron Wolf . [4][source]

Added September 02, 2026

Known for

Mullvad VPN (co-founder, co-owner)

Daniel is the co-founder of Mullvad VPN, alongside Fredrik Strömberg. In June 2026, Daniel donated 5M Swedish Krona (~$500,000 USD) to the populist anti-immigration Örebro Party, [1][source] saying “it’s sad that it’s needed”. The party supports the ethnic cleansing of non-white people from Sweden, and Daniel’s donation represented, at the time, 72% of the party’s revenue. Daniel cited immigration as a motivating factor for his donation.

Added September 01, 2026

Known for

Popular cryptographic algorithms, e.g. Salsa20, ed25519; qmail, djbdns

Alias

djb

Daniel is an well-known and influential cryptographer and former visiting professor at TU/Eindhoven, [1][source] where he has worked with his wife, Tanja Lange, the chair of the coding theory and cryptology group there. [2][source]

Daniel and Tanja are associates of Jacob Appelbaum [3]Jacob Appelbaum and served as his PhD advisors. [4][source] [5][source] One of the students under Bernstein and Lange at TU/e, Henry de Valence, resigned from their PhD program in 2016 citing patterns of harassment, abuse, and bullying at the hands of Jacob, Daniel, and Tanja. [6][source]

Added August 31, 2026

Known for

Ruby on Rails, Omarchy (founder); 37signals (CTO); Shopify (Board member)

Alias

DHH

David is a multi-millionare who funds and boosts the “dark enlightenment” in FOSS. His Linux distribution, Omarchy, is a loose collection of vibe-coded scripts on top Arch Linux and a vehicle for soliciting investments from large companies (e.g. Cloudflare, Framework, Dell, Block ( Jack Dorsey [1]Jack Dorsey ), Dropbox, 1password) [2][source] [3][source] to finance the projects of his weird little friends.

He wrote a blog post, “As I remember London”, [4][source] in which he uses numerous racist, fascist, and ethno-nationalist dog-whistles while calling for the ethnic cleansing via forced removal of non-white people from the UK and other countries. Another of David’s posts, “Wolves, sheep, and gypsies” [5][source] compares Roma people to wolves and again calls for an ethnic cleansing.

The Ruby on Rails leadership stood by David in spite of numerous calls for his removal from positions of power by members of the community. [6][source] [7][source]

Added August 31, 2026

Known for

Xlibre (founder)

Alias

metux

Enrico is the founder of the Xlibre project, a fork of Xorg. Took the Wayland/RedHat DEI conspiracy theory to its natural conclusion by making an unwoke fork of the deprecated Xserver project to keep it alive. The code of conduct is just “404” in a text file, and the README has been cleaned up but was initially mostly just a rant about the RedHat DEI big-tech conspiracy theory. [1][source]

I dug up an email from Enrico back in 2018 where he goes on an incomprehensible rant blaming World War II on the allies, flirting with Holocaust denial and stating that Churchill should have been the first one prosecuted at Nuremberg. [2][source]

The Xlibre community is radically inclusive, which is to say, a huge circlejerk of open Nazis and bigots with no moderation.

Added August 31, 2026

Known for

Open Source Initiative (disgraced co-founder); “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”

Alias

esr

Eric is a creepy weird guy who writes racist, homophobic, and misogynist screeds everywhere he can. He uses his blog, “Armed and Dangerous; Sex, software, politics, and firearms. Life’s simple pleasures…”, to advocate for weird right-wing politics, such as strident support for Kyle Rittenhouse [1][source] and threatening to shoot communists. [2][source] He said gay men deserved to get AIDS because of “unfettered promiscuity”, [3][source] quotes racist talking points about police violence, [4][source] and says organizations that try to get women more involved in FOSS are trying to entrap men with rape accusations. [5][source] See also Eric’s essay on “Preventing visceral racism”. [6][source]

Eric got kicked out of the OSI mailing lists for being a huge asshole back in 2020. [7][source]

Added August 31, 2026

Known for

FUTO

Eron is the modestly wealthy founder of FUTO, an organization that funds software projects. He doesn’t like the Open Source Definition [1][source] and cites other weird little guys like Bryan Lunduke [2]Bryan Lunduke and Eric S. Raymond [3]Eric S. Raymond to make his case. Eron is friends with Curtis Yarvin [4]Curtis Yarvin , a notable techno-fascist and influence on JD Vance, and invited Curtis onto FUTO’s platform for an interview in 2023. [5][source]

Associate of Louis Rossmann [6]Louis Rossmann .

Added August 31, 2026

Known for

SimpleX chat

Evgeny is a supporter of the far-right populist Reform UK party, and the Donald Trump administration. In 2024, he donated to the Reform UK party on behalf of SimpleX chat, [1][source] and boosted Tommy Robinson, a far-right, anti-Islam activist and convicted violent criminal, and his support of violent far-right riots in the UK. [2][source]

On X, Evgeny frequently boosts far-right politicians, COVID-19 conspiracy theories, climate change denial, and transphobic and otherwise bigoted rhetoric. [3][source] [4][source]

SimpleX has received a $1M donation from Jack Dorsey [5]Jack Dorsey [6][source] in the wake of changes to Telegram that promised to crack down on far-right extremism on the app.

Added September 04, 2026

Known for

nostr maintainer

Reclusive lead developer of the nostr protocol/social media thing, [1][source] and a devotee of the late Brazilian far-right conspiracy theorist Olavo de Carvalho. [2][source] Sponsored by Jack Dorsey [3]Jack Dorsey . [4][source]

Added September 01, 2026

Known for

Vercel, Next.js

Guillermo is the founder and CEO of Vercel, a company valued at $9.3 billion, [1][source] and is pictured here during a meeting with wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, to whom he wished “greatness for Israel”. [2][source]

Guillermo is a public supporter of X, Elon Musk’s far-right bastardization of Twitter, [3][source] and often boosts Musk’s posts there. [4][source]

Added September 02, 2026

Known for

Twitter (co-founder); Block, Inc (Square, Cash App, etc); nostr financial backer

Jack is the billionaire financial supporter of nostr, and donated $10M to the nostr foundation, of which Alex Gleason [1]Alex Gleason is a member, and 14 BTC to " Fiatjaf [2]Fiatjaf " directly. [3][source]

Jack joined the BlueSky board of directors in 2022, before pivoting to nostr, leaving over the fact that Bluesky wanted to implement centralized moderation tools. [4][source] One of the main selling points of nostr is “censorship resistance”, which makes it particularly attractive for weirdos like those on this list who want somewhere to say weird shit without getting moderated for it.

Jack also financially supports Andreas Kling [5]Andreas Kling , David Heinemeier Hansson [6]David Heinemeier Hansson , and Evgeny Poberezkin [7]Evgeny Poberezkin .

He chickened out of doing a keynote at FOSDEM in 2025 when I organized a protest action against his presence there. [8][source]

Added September 01, 2026

Known for

Tor (former contributor), Freedom of the Press Foundation (former TAB member)

Alias

io, ioerror

Jacob is a cryptography and computer security researcher and disgraced ex-member of the Tor project. In 2016 ten people came forward to present serious accusations of sexual harassment, assault, and rape, [1][source] ultimately leading to his removal from the Tor project, [2][source] Debian, [3][source] and the hackerspace he co-founded, Noisebridge. [4][source]

He still works quietly and mostly out of the public view at TU/Eindhoven [5][source] and has been rumoured to pop up at events around Berlin in recent years. He is currently working on the Vula network encryption scheme, [6][source] which was funded by NLnet. [7][source]

Added August 31, 2026

Known for

JeffGeerling YouTube channel, blogger

Jeff hosts a reasonably successful YouTube channel where he often posts videos about FOSS, open hardware, and Linux, and a blog with supplementary materials.

Jeff is a Catholic anti-abortion and anti-contraception advocate, and has written several blog posts on the subject between 2011 and 2013. [1][source] Popular YouTube channel Practical Engineering aimed to collaborate with him in 2025, but retracted his support after the community pointed out Jeff’s politics. [2][source] Jeff was informed of the reason why Practical Engineering did not wish to collaborate with him, but has not issued any apologies or retractions for his earlier statements.

Jeff did delete two blog posts following the call-out, one where he re-iterated his anti-abortion position in the cases of rape and incest, [3][source] and another where he argued that a “genetic disposition to homosexuality” was not “okay”. [4][source]

Added September 07, 2026

Known for

NeoVim maintainer

The NeoVim website quoted an endorsement from David Heinemeier Hansson [1]David Heinemeier Hansson until August of 2026. When an issue was opened on GitHub to complain about using an endorsement from a fascist, [2][source] Justin had a bit of a crash out, ultimately removing the quote and ending the discussion by calling those who protested “a drive-by mob, swirling from one mindless vomit-party to another, like the pacific garbage patch”.

Justin had a YouTube playlist [3][source] full of right-wing propaganda up until the DHH debate on GitHub, including sources from Curtis Yarvin [4]Curtis Yarvin and Peter Thiel. One of Justin’s co-maintainers for NeoVim, TJ DeVries, also spoke at David’s Omacon in 2026. [5][source]

Fun fact: during the GitHub debacle over the DHH quote, Justin said “I don’t care if I end up on Drew’s list”, which inspired me to make this list in the first place.

Added September 07, 2026

Known for

suckless.org

Laslo is the first chair of the suckless board of directors, alongside Jan Klemkow and Anselm R Garbe. He, and many members of suckless, are covert Neo-Nazis. In their 2017 hackathon, hosted in Germany and attended mostly by Germans, they hosted a torchlit march, which in Germany is of course historically coded as a Nazi action. [1][source] [2][source] Laslo posted on Lobsters about it at some length, calling the backlash to this event “cultural marxism” (a common dog-whistle for “the Jews”). [3][source]

Laslo pushed suckless to add a statement clarifying the intent of the torchlit march, and another denouncing fascism and Nazism, and his changes were forcibly reverted by other suckless members. Make of that what you will.

They all do a decent job of maintaining plausible deniability, but it falls apart on closer inspection.

Added September 04, 2026

Known for

Louis Rossmann YouTube channel, FUTO, right to repair

Alias

larossmann

Louis is a prominent right to repair activist who runs a popular YouTube channel on the subject. He worked with FUTO, Eron Wolf [1]Eron Wolf , from August 2022 to February 2025, and his right-to-repair non-profit received a $1M donation from Wolf. [2][source] [3][source]

On August 3rd, 2026, Louis posted a video about openly transgender Colorado state representative Brianna Titone, and in the YouTube comments posted a remark explaining his position on transgender issues, which can be paraphrased as “I think transgender women are men but I’m willing to overlook it if we have common cause”. [4][source]

Louis has been a regular poster on the hate and harassment website Kiwi Farms, posting there from 2023 to the present under the username “larossmann”.

Added September 02, 2026

Known for

ThePrimeagen Twitch/YouTube accounts

Alias

ThePrimeagen

Popular Twitch streamer and YouTube personality whose content isn’t all that weird, but who is publicly associated with a bunch of weirdos in this list. He’s a speaker at Omacon 2026, David Heinemeier Hansson [1]David Heinemeier Hansson ’s conference for fashy weirdos, [2][source] and a donor to Andreas Kling [3]Andreas Kling ’s Ladybird, [4][source] and otherwise maintains associations with and financially supports people in a little network of weirdos.

Added August 31, 2026

Known for

Hashicorp (co-founder), Terraform, Vagrant, etc; Ghostty; Superlogical

Mitchell is the wealthy co-founder of Hashicorp and is currently in vogue for his vibe-coded terminal emulator Ghostty, and has many personal and financial relationships with rich weird little guys.

Mitchell is on the board of directors at Vercel, where Guillermo Rauch [1]Guillermo Rauch is CEO. [2][source] Guillermo is also an investor in Mitchell’s latest venture, Superlogical, where Mitchell works with associates and alumni of Hashicorp, Vercel, and Shopify. [3][source]

Other investors in Superlogical include Tobias Lütke [4]Tobias Lütke , CEO of Shopify, as well as various sponsors of David Heinemeier Hansson [5]David Heinemeier Hansson ’s Omarchy project, including Patrick Collision, CEO of Stripe. Paul Coppelstone, CEO of Supabase, also sponsors both Superlogical and Andreas Kling [6]Andreas Kling ’s Ladybird project. Mitchell is an associate of David Heinemeier Hansson, [7][source] [8][source] and he uses and regularly promotes Omarchy. [9][source]

Added September 14, 2026

Known for

Hyprland

Alias

Vaxry

Rafał Kucharski is the “edgy” founder and maintainer of the Hyprland Wayland compositor. He oversees a toxic community and participates in hate and bigotry, particularly towards LGBTQ+ folks. [1][source] Downplayed an incident where moderators of his Discord server changed the pronouns of a trans person to deliberately misgender them, saying “on the Internet, let’s be real, [he] is the default”. [2][source]

Got banned from freedesktop.org after losing his shit when they privately warned him not to be a toxic jerk in their community spaces. [3][source] Hates codes of conduct and inclusivity in FOSS. [4][source]

Funded by Framework, [5][source] speaker at David Heinemeier Hansson [6]David Heinemeier Hansson ’s Omacon 2026. [7][source]

Added September 01, 2026

Known for

Free Software Foundation, GNU, GCC

Alias

rms

Richard is the founder of the Free Software Foundation and one of the most important figures in getting this whole thing off of the ground. Also the subject of credible rumors of harassing a lot of women over the years, and frequently writes on his website in defense of rapists, sexual harassment, sexual exploitation of minors, distribution of child sexual abuse material, and even bestiality and necrophilia. Stallman’s behavior is extensively covered in The Stallman Report. [1][source]

Added September 02, 2026

Known for

Shopify (co-founder & CEO), Ruby on Rails (core team)

Tobias is a billionaire and personal friend of David Heinemeier Hansson [1]David Heinemeier Hansson , and raced as part of his team for Era Motorsport. [2][source] He has a 40% controlling interest in Shopify. [3][source]

Tobias defended Shopify’s choice to platform (and therefore directly financially support) far-right tabloid Breitbart in 2017, [4][source] citing freedom of speech and resisting the idea of implementing a “moral code” for Shopify clients. He also endorsed a proposal to strip retirees of voting rights and make votes proportional to wealth. [5][source]

Added September 04, 2026

Known for

cock.li

Vincent is the owner of the “cock.li” email provider, which provides intentionally “edgy” email addresses to its users and targets bigots and extremists who would be marginalized elsewhere with its free speech absolutist principles. The domain names available include options such as “@n*gge.rs” and “@rape.lol”, as well as a number of more covert domain names such as “@airmail.cc” which are more likely to fly under the radar.

Added September 04, 2026